Weekly Update August 6, 2015

Alturi Newsletter - August 6, 2015

Jennicet Gutiérrez, transgender immigrant rights activist, speaks out one month after she interrupted President Obama. The incident made national headlines and brought attention to transgender women whom the U.S. detains in men’s immigration detention centers. “I felt like my body was going to collapse,” Gutiérrez says now.

According to J-FLAG, “Jamaica is changing slowly and moving in the right direction to make the country a more hospitable place for LGBTI Jamaicans. We will use the occasion to increase our visibility as a people, showcase our talents and allow ourselves to talk about where we are and to where we must go."

Thousands of Israelis demonstrated across the country in response to last week's LGBTI pride parade attack that left one dead and five others wounded. Mourners attended a previously scheduled rally in Tel Aviv commemorating an attack on a LGBTI youth center in 2009 that left two dead and wounded 15 others.

Two same-sex Philippine couples applied for marriage licenses on August 3 in a first for the conservative Catholic nation, but were promptly rejected by the government. The denial was expected, but the couples wanted to raise awareness and show commitment to their partners.

Sylvia Tamale is an Afro-feminist lawyer, activist, professor, and outspoken advocate for LGBTI rights. Over the course of her life, her worldview has changed in response to several “somewhat painful ‘awakenings.’” Her outrage “led to the mother-of-all-awakenings within me: this was the power and agency to speak out against injustice.”